Prophecy
by Luscena
Summary: A prophecy long forgotten has finally come to light once more as Valoran falls into chaos. Now allies and foes alike must come together and set aside their differences in order to save the home they all love.


I've had the idea for this story for a couple years now. I tried to write it a while back and ended up not liking the way it turned out, so i'm taking another go at it! :D

Anyway, this is only the prologue. A little backstory. The story will begin in chapter one :3

Let me know if there are any typos.

Enjoy~

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Prologue  
 _Five hundred years before modern Valoran_

The dreams were never clear.

Nor had they ever been.

The only thing they had ever held was the truth. They lacked coherency, and almost never came to him in sequential order, but in fragments that needed to be carefully pieced together. Words and images appeared detached from one another, visions coming to him in short bursts as the familiar echoes and whispers swirled around him. At first, comprehending any of it would be an impossible feat, but if one listens patiently, the disjointed sounds will soon morph into complete thoughts. And from there, the voice will seemingly latch onto one verse and repeat it over and over, louder than the rest. And that, he realized, is the only part he needed to remember. The images he was shown were nearly of equal importance, but they took much longer to decipher, and he saw them every time he closed his eyes.

Though disconnected and unclear, the dreams always had a purpose.

Decades ago, when these dreams first began, he had assumed it was because he'd spent too much time at the local tavern, drinking himself into a stupor. He thought they meant nothing. But soon, they started haunting him even while he was sober, and that's when he realized that something was different. These dreams weren't normal. Nevertheless, when he realized this, he never asked for guidance. He marched right back into the tavern, hoping that the right amount of alcohol would drown out his dreams, or at least put them on hold. However, he only found himself waking up in a cold sweat from the same dream, nauseous, with no recollection of how or when he got home, or why he was laying in the middle of his floor.

Try as he might, the dreams only became a more frequent occurrence, even beginning to invade his mind while he was awake. No longer was the waking world his only respite. In the midst of his days, his vision would cloud over and fill with indecipherable images; bright flashing lights, glowing figures, shadowed entities and blood spatter. And from every corner of his mind, that voice – that _damned voice_ – would reverberate through his skull like a haunted melody. And after what felt like hours, the sounds would fade and the images would vanish and once his eyes readjusted to the world around him, he would realize that not even a second had passed.

He always hoped that one day, the dreams would stop, but they never did. Deep in his mind, he knew that he was seeing these things for a reason – no, something was _giving_ him these visions, and he just didn't know what – but he needed to learn how to live with it. So he adapted. He let his dreams become a part of him – just a fragment of his personality, the same as all the rest. And once he accepted his life the way it had become, he gradually began to realize that his dreams weren't complete nonsense. Confusing, yes, but for every dream he had, something would occur in the real world that would make the words he heard ring true. The voice spoke of betrayal and a red pond. Merely days later, there was a hunting accident in the forest – a man mistakenly shot his partner with an arrow, and his body collapsed into a shallow pond, his blood turning the water a deep shade of crimson. Though it seemed so loosely tied to his dream, he knew that it had been predicted. Maybe if he'd listened better, or tried harder to decipher what he'd seen and understand it, he could have known and prevented the accident altogether. He thought maybe that had been the point of these dreams. To stop them from happening.

He later realized that wasn't true. Sometimes, the events portrayed in his dreams were beyond his control. Beyond the control of anyone or anything.

He dreamt of famine. Of death. Of unimaginable heat. And this dream haunted him for months. Eventually, he'd had enough and he told an old friend about his dreams, hoping for some form of guidance or reassurance. He explained how he believed his dreams were coming to him from the gods themselves, and that it was the only thing that made sense. How else would his dreams enable him to predict the future?

But his friend only laughed in his face, telling him that he was just being superstitious and that the dreams were only caused by prolonged stress. But he knew that wasn't true. Soon enough, his entire village had heard of his prediction, and they all called him crazy. Even those that were superstitious refused to believe that the gods would choose to speak through _him_ instead of someone of importance. They called him a liar. He was accused of making it all up to try and pull his reputation out of the mud and polish it off.

Everybody soon forgot about his prediction. About him.

But then it happened.

For weeks on end, the sun remained high in the sky. Crops withered and died. Water supplies ran dry. Countless people fell to starvation and thirst. The dark of night evaded them. Everyone around him was dying, and yet he remained a spectacle of health compared to the rest; he never grew hungry or thirsty or weak, as if something greater than himself had been protecting him through it all. And that's when he knew that the gods had been watching over him. Speaking through him. However, the dreams were just as much of a curse as they were a blessing. Though they could prepare him for events to come, everyone he knew had grown to resent him.

When the eternal daylight finally came to an end and the sun disappeared behind the horizon, the survivors came out of their homes and fell to their knees, thanking the gods. Cries of relief could be heard throughout the entire village, along with cries of sorrow for those who had fallen. Even so, it was eerily silent, and that silence struck him more harshly than any sound ever could. There were nearly one hundred people dead, and several more had ventured off in search of water. Only the gods know what became of them. In a small village of just over two hundred people, over half of them had been lost. His only friend had been among them.

In the midst of his grief, villagers came to him shouting and sobbing. They blamed him for it all. They claimed he had cursed the village; how else could he have remained perfectly healthy while they were all dead or dying? Had this been some kind of revenge for not believing in him?

They called him the devil.

Others recalled the dream he had told them about months ago, and they knew this had not been his fault. He was simply the voice. Even though they tried to stand up for him, everyone else refused to hear them, as there were so few.

They banished him from the village, to a small cabin on the outskirts of town, saying that if they ever saw him again, he would be killed.

He did as he was told. After all, how could he possibly stand up to an entire village?

Time passed. Everyone worked hard to rebuild their lives and bring the village back from the ashes, doing their best to fill the voids that the recent tragedy had created. After a while, the few people that had stood by him started bringing him food whenever they could manage; usually once every other day, but it was more than he could have asked for. Most of the time, he received bread and small portions of meat and cheese. Occasionally, they would bring him cakes or ale, and those were the best days. He was grateful for them. They made his miserable life a little more bearable.

Each visit, they would ask him why he hadn't gone elsewhere in search of a better life because gods know anywhere else had more to offer him than this. Few even offered him refuge with their relatives who lived miles and miles away, but he politely declined them all. Though he appreciated that they were trying to help, he knew there was nothing out there for him. He could leave the village, but this curse would follow him everywhere, and everyone he'd meet, he would only drag down with him. He couldn't risk ruining anymore lives. Even though it didn't make sense that it was his fault, there was still a part of him that couldn't shake the feeling that he really was cursed. If he ever tried to make a life elsewhere, it would only turn out like this in the end. And besides, he's spent all seventy of his years living in this village. Even if he wanted to, he could never make himself leave.

There was one villager in particular that intrigued him: a young woman who couldn't have been any more than twenty-five years of age. Her name was Lucia.

What piqued his interest above all else was the fact that he had never seen her before, and in such a small village, it's nearly impossible to find someone you've never met. If he'd ever laid eyes on someone like her, there's no way he would ever forget. She had the most beautiful snow-white hair he had ever seen, laced with the faintest streaks of gold that framed her heart-shaped face so perfectly. It curled and drifted over her slender shoulders, coming to a stop near the small of her back, and beneath the feathery wisps of her hair, her crystal blue eyes blinked up at him with wisdom far beyond her years. Though her skin was abnormally pale and unblemished for anyone living in a place like this, he never found it in him to question her. And it may have been a trick of the light, but she seemed to glow.

Ignoring her appearance, her clothing was a spectacle all on its own. Pure white, deep violet, reds and blues, tinged with gold and all made out of the finest silk. Her dresses hugged her small waist and draped from her hips and her shoulders, flowing behind her as she walked. Though it wasn't so much walking as it was gliding; the way she moved was so graceful he could have sworn she was floating. Knowing that it was an impossibility was the only thing keeping him from believing it.

Someone such as herself could not be from around here. So what was she doing here? Why was she spending her time with him?

He never asked because he worried she would stop coming. There was something different about her. Something... inhuman. But at the same time, she was very much human. He couldn't put his finger on it, but maybe if he spent enough time with her, he would figure it out.

They would play games and share stories, many fictional and others not. She had so much to tell him, he found it hard to believe that she was so young; it seemed to him that she had already lived a hundred lifetimes. At first, she always seemed happy to visit, but after a couple of months, her demeanor changed and her stories grew darker. She seemed sad, almost fearful.

There was one story she told that really struck him. She was so vague when she spoke, but the way she said it and the words she used caused an overwhelming feeling of dread to creep up his spine and seize his heart. She spoke of a ruthless leader who slaughtered his followers, of shadows and demons rising from the earth and enslaving the living, forcing them to murder their friends and lovers with their own hands. When she had finished speaking, she froze for the longest time, and then uttered a single phrase, barely above a whisper.

"One day, the light with die."

After a moment, she bolted upright, her eyes darting from left to right as if someone was calling out to her. Someone she was afraid of.

And with that, she stood up and hurried towards the door, pausing only briefly to look back at him.

"Goodbye, Theon," she muttered, and was gone.

He jumped up from his seat and ran over to the door as quickly as his frail body would allow, but by the time he reached it and made it outside, she was nowhere to be seen.

He never saw her again.

That night, he had a new dream. One bathed in blood and entangled in war, his mind filled with screams and maniacal laughter. And then there was that voice again... how could he have not recognized it before? That voice had greeted him nearly every day for the past several months, and yet it had not dawned on him until just now. This dream, though he had never seen it before, seemed familiar somehow, as if he'd read it in a book... no, this was eerily similar to the story Lucia had told him before she disappeared.

His brain was reeling trying to comprehend the events taking place before him, but the image was far too distorted. Even so, he felt an overwhelming sense of grief and loss unlike anything he'd ever experienced before. He kept trying to tell himself, over and over, that it was just a dream, but deep down he knew that wasn't true. The scene before him just hadn't happened quite yet.

Her voice grew louder and clearer, repeating one sentence again and again. Eventually, his vision cut to black and he opened his eyes, shooting upwards in a panic and throwing his sheets to the side, breathing heavily. As the voice still echoed around him, he stumbled over to his desk and fell into his chair, hurriedly finding a pen and ink and scribbling down the words on a piece of paper in nearly illegible handwriting.

" _The future will crumble before the shadows of the past. One solitary flickering light upon crimson soil shall vanquish all."_


End file.
